While a final ruling has yet to be rendered, the Virginia Supreme Court has reinstated Vlaming v. West Point School Board wherein Peter Vlaming can pursue his suit that his firing over compelled speech is a violation of his First Amendment rights of free speech and religion.
In the lawsuit, which sought $1 million in damages and for the court to rule the board violated Vlaming’s rights, Vlaming claims he used “the student’s preferred name but could not in good conscience use male pronouns to refer to a female.”
The suit alleges Vlaming tried to accommodate the student by avoiding the use of pronouns, but that he was directed to use male pronouns to refer to the student and was fired after he refused.
As we have been witnessing over the past ten-to-fifteen years, the ideology of radical Leftism has come to the forefront across most of America’s institutions. And while the seeds of the radicalism were planted as far back as President Woodrow Wilson, the direct attacks on individuals for not submitting to the orthodoxy have intensified along with the growth of social media. From “cancel culture” to loosely organized mobs who can be directed to burn down cities, ala 2020, to assaulting heretics on college campuses, the Constitutionally protected right to heterodoxy … aka freedom of conscience … is in grave danger of disappearing.
And no less than the ostensible champion of civil rights, the ACLU, filed a brief against Vleming.
Even though Vlaming explained that his religious beliefs precluded him from calling a biological girl a boy, the board would not relent. It said that Vlaming was not only forbidden to use pronouns that contradicted the student’s chosen “identity” but that he had no right to avoid pronouns altogether. Instead, it said, he was required to use pronouns that proactively affirmed the student’s anatomically incorrect gender predilection.
Therefore, even though he was an excellent teacher, the school board fired him. And when he filed suit saying that his free speech and free exercise of religion rights were violated, the ACLU filed a brief against him. Never mind the teacher’s First Amendment rights, said the supposed guardian group of the First Amendment. The student’s right to avoid “discrimination,” said the left-wing group, had been somehow violated by the teacher’s refusal to use masculine pronouns.
Of course, we’ve been here before with the American Criminal Liars Union who has fully embraced the pagan transgenderism that is destroying women’s rights.
What we have in our educational institutions, from grade school through university, is a rigid, religious, orthodoxy jealous of any dissent and determined to stamp out any rival beliefs. These are the ilk that claim the Constitution is a living document and/or that the amendments (especially the first and second) are not legitimate in the new world order.
Makes one want to go back and revisit what could possibly be the real motivation behind their 1978 defense of Nazis marching in Skokie, Illinois. Free speech or the first warning shot across the bow of religious Jews that the days of Judeo-Christian principles were numbered?
Obama and his administration greased the skids into taking a classical liberal America and fundamentally changing it into a place filled with racially divisive tribes competing for the privilege of Biggest Oppressed Group. The rapid adoption of DEI, CRT and other anti-American “isms” is that man’s true legacy. It is an ideology that rivals Marx, Mao and Hitler in its hatred of individual rights and agency.
It is past time for a full de-Nazification of American institutions. Let’s start with our “educators”.
featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
Cameron says: Long past time we stop celebrating and encouraging mental illness. I hope he wins and the settlement is harsh enough pour encourager les autres.
GWB says: the ideology of radical Leftism
More clearly, the religion of Progressivism.
GWB says: Instead, it said, he was required to use pronouns that proactively affirmed the student’s anatomically incorrect gender predilection.
Yeah, see, that’s a religious doctrine that you’re being required to follow. The answer is “I’ll see you in court; and I’ll see you in hell before I act against my faith.”
These are the ilk that claim the Constitution is a living document
They don’t really care. They only use that (much as they used “free speech” to obliterate obscenity laws in the 60s) to destroy any hold that proper morals might have remaining on society. They want to replace Christian Civilization with Progressive Utopia, and they will use every power they can, by hook or crook, to achieve the power to do that.
It is an ideology that rivals Marx
It is the ideology of Marx. If you get into the history of Marx, he was raised in a nominally Christian home, but he found it to be awful. So he set out – in his later writings – to replace it with dialectic materialism. Basically a religion rejecting all gods but man’s own mind. And off he went with all the craziness. It wasn’t just him – an entire intellectual movement was working to destroy the Enlightenment and Christianity in those years. All of this flows from his and his contemporaries’ intellectualist hubris. It was the Tower of Babel as “Progress!”.
But, the only way you’re going to get rid of this is to re-evangelize America into Christian morals and mindsets and into the principles that founded America (based as they are on Christianity). We can’t simply force it. We can’t simply vote harder. We have to actually re-convert the people, showing them the bits and pieces of Progressivism that have tainted their worldview, even as “conservatives”.
And, I think you’ve done a decent job of making that argument, here, Darleen.
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